Chemical and chemoenzymatic syntheses of carbohydrates for therapeutic evalutions and immunological studies

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It is hard nowadays to meet someone living in Canada who has not lost someone close to them from cancer. During last century, once a rare disease, cancer has quickly evolved and become the second most common cause of mortality, next to heart disease. Cancer now kills 27% of men and 23% of women in Canada, and statistics has predicted a much higher risk to acquire cancer for today's Canadian population; one in every 2.4 males versus one in every 2.7 females will develop cancer in their lifetime. Carbohydrates hold the key in helping us understanding the origin, development and proliferation of cancer as well as infectious disease as they are primary mediator molecules playing central roles in all sorts of cell-cell communication and signal transduction. Studying protein-carbohydrate, carbohydrate-carbohydrate interactions can enable us to design and synthesize effective therapeutics that can target the crucial pathways these diseases rely on.